Six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez has at long last been given the OK to return to racing.
The door is open for him to race at next weekend’s Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao and end an absence of nearly nine months since suffering severe arm injuries last July.
A brief statement released this morning by the Repsol Honda team confirmed that Marquez has been cleared to race again but did not specify just yet whether he would be making a return to the track at Portimao in five days’ time.
However Marquez’s own post on social media indicated that he very much intended to contest the Portuguese GP.
I'M VERY HAPPY! Yesterday I visited the doctors and they gave me the green light to return to competition. They have been 9 difficult months, with moments of uncertainties and ups and downs, and now, I will be able to enjoy my passion again!
See you next week in Portimao!! 😁😁✊🏼 pic.twitter.com/ClZj4L4yf3— Marc Márquez (@marcmarquez93) April 10, 2021
“In the review carried out on Marc Marquez by the Hospital Ruber Internacional medical team, four months after surgery, led by Doctors Samuel Antuna and Ignacio Roger de Ona, and made up of Doctors De Miguel, Ibarzabal and Garcia Villanueva, for an infected pseudoarthrosis of the right humerus, a very satisfactory clinical condition was found, with evident progress in the bone consolidation process,” said the Honda statement.
“In the current situation, Marquez can return to competition, assuming the reasonable risk implicit in his sporting activity.”
Marquez declared he was “very happy!” and said that after “nine difficult months, with moments of uncertainties and ups and downs, now I will be able to enjoy my passion again!”, adding: “See you next week in Portimao!!”
Marquez underwent major surgery in early December to graft a piece of bone from his pelvis to his arm to aid regrowth of the badly broken humerus he suffered at the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix, and was then forced to spend a week in hospital after contracting an infection in the bone.
Cleared to return to action ‘gradually’ in March, that timeline sped up dramatically in the subsequent weeks, with Marquez first jumping on a Honda RC213V-S (essentially the production racer version of his title-winning 2017 machine) at Barcelona and then again at Portimao, gauging his level of fitness and starting rumours that he would attempt to return at the opening race in Qatar last month.
However, having admitted to the press earlier this year that he had learned lessons from his last failed attempt to return to action too quickly – a move that caused the majority of damage to his arm as it broke the titanium plate – he elected not to ride in Qatar at the first two rounds.
“First of all, the most important thing is to make sure in the doctor’s check that the bone consolidation is going in a good way, and when he says that it is fixed then I’ll continue with the rehabilitation,” he said at that stage.
“It will take time, though. I am already working, but not in an aggressive way. When the bone consolidation is OK and it is fixed in a good way then I’ll try to continue working in a good way to recover the muscles and be in a good way to ride the bike.”
